Will Rogers World Airport traffic up

OKLAHOMA CITY – Passenger traffic through Will Rogers World Airport for 2011 was up almost 3 percent over the previous year, Oklahoma City airport officials reported Thursday.

But traffic through Tulsa International Airport for the year was down nearly 2 percent compared with 2010. Tulsa’s airport experienced a total decline of 52,000 passengers boarding and leaving planes for the calendar year, while Oklahoma City’s airport saw a total of 105,000 more passengers coming and going, officials reported.

The year ended on a high note for Will Rogers, with more than 13,000 passengers leaving the city during traditionally the heaviest travel months of November and December, up about 5 percent from the same months in 2010. Airport officials said earlier that mild weather probably helped buoy those figures. As is usually the case each year, fewer passengers disembarked in the city compared with those going to visit elsewhere.

In Oklahoma City, Southwest Airlines reported the greatest number of passengers boarding planes, nearly 57,000 over the entire year. Southwest showed 4-percent growth for the year over 2010. Delta and United airlines were next, with about 25,000 and 19,000 passengers, respectively. United, however, showed the greatest passenger growth in Oklahoma, 30 percent over 2010 traffic. At the other end of the scale, Continental numbers declined by 37 percent for the year.